The Procrustean Bed of Jonathan Kozol

In Greek mythology, Procrustes was a bandit from Attica who lived in the hills outside Eleusis where he had an iron bed.  He would kidnap unwary passers-by and force them to lay in his bed.  If they were too tall, he would chop them down to size; if they were too short they would be painfully stretched to fit. It was a no-win situation for Procrustes' victims; no one ever fit because the bed was adjustable; Procrustes would size up his victims beforehand and adjust the bed to insure they would be too tall or too short.

Educrat Jonathan Kozol is a latter day Procrustes.  His "bed" is racial equality in the schools. In his latest book The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America Kozol argues that socio-economic stratification is leading the country's schools back to a pre Brown v. Board of Education era.  And there is no measure that is too draconian for Kozol to take in pursuit of perfect equality.  In an interview with the Sacramento News & Reviews this is Kozol's response to the observation that resegregation is largely the result of housing patterns:

At the same time that we battle to integrate public schools across district lines, we also have to launch a relentless attack upon residential segregation--of which the real-estate industry is the architect. It’s time to enforce housing laws vigorously, to stop the notorious racial steering that goes on. Give a heavy tax advantage--a major deduction on mortgage interest, for example--to families that purchase homes in racially mixed communities or to families that don’t flee from newly mixed communities.”

For forty years the Civil Rights Act has made it against the law to put whites only clauses in mortgage documents. Today, people live among members of their own racial or ethnic group by choice.  It was not an evil, racist real-estate industry that steered ethnic Taiwanese into buying property in Monterey Park, California; they chose to move from Taipei to the San Gabriel Valley in large numbers so they could enjoy a suburban, Southern California life among people who spoke their language and shared their cultural values. Leave it to a radical egalitarian like Kozol (who also happens to be a white male) to tell people of color what's good for them.  Now who's a bigot?